The Case of the Piglet's Paternity

Judge Jon C. Blue's intriguing account of trials from the seventeenth-century New Haven Colony will fascinate readers. The book diverges from the approach that professional historians have taken in discussing early colonial trials and raises new questions about these sources. Two interests animate the book. First, Blue seeks to render the trials readable and to restore cases that were excised from printed accounts. Second, he offers commentary on the trials from the perspective of a seasoned lawyer and judge. The enjoyable and instructive manner in which he accomplishes both tasks makes the book worth reading by professional scholars and amateur New England historians. The compelling manner in which Blue renders the trials serves as a salutary model. The New Haven Colony trial records from 1639 to 1663 were printed in the mid-nineteenth century. As Blue points out, the retention of abbreviations and contractions in the documents makes them “extremely difficult to read” (p. 4). He recounts thirty-three trials in a vivid legal-journalistic manner, providing chapter titles reminiscent of a mystery book: “The Piglet's Paternity”; “The Frisky Couple”; “The Farmhand Arsonist.” For some historians, the titles and the occasional effort at a catchy lead paragraph may strike an anomalous note given the seriousness of some subjects (for example, the execution of the servant, George Spencer, after a trial for the alleged crime of bestiality). Blue, however, is careful to remark on the considerable injustices, and the titles represent his conviction that the trials have familiar elements. Indeed, he restores four omitted trials. Two involved allegations of bestiality; two involved alleged sexual conduct with children. Why Spencer's case was printed and the others were not remains a mystery—one that should offer a cautionary note to those relying on printed judicial records. Blue does a splendid job of narrating the trials with a snappy writing style. He deftly quotes from the original sources without losing the narrative. He excels at making clear whether or not testimony was given under oath. Anyone who can retell a case about badly made shoes (“The Faulty Shoes”) to hold readers' interest through twelve pages deserves praise

Amateur · Haven · Paragraph · Political science · Reading (process · Seriousness · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law